The Gospel Transforms Lives — Part Two

The following message by Aleister Beg is made available by Truth for Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. Well, good morning and uh I invite you to turn to Phileiman. It is uh to just uh one page. Um thank thanks for your u u patience last evening.

Um in the sort of somewhat circuitous um introduction to this uh little uh letter um I I was thinking that uh the talk last night uh was a little bit like uh Christopher Columbus in in the sense that um when he set out he didn't know where he was going.

Um when he got there he didn't know where he was 
[clears throat]
 and when he got back he didn't know where he'd been and so if you had that sort of strange uneasy feeling last evening um you weren't alone you were not alone um well let me just read the first seven verses 
[clears throat]
 Paul a prisoner for Christ Jesus and Timothy our brother to Phileiman 
[snorts]
 our beloved loved fellow worker and Afia our sister and Archipus our fellow soldier and the church in your house.

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. and a brief prayer. I just we pray earnestly that you will make the book live to us, oh Lord. Illumine our understanding, illumin the printed page by the Holy Spirit so that we might be just made aware that it is for your voice that we listen.

It is your voice through your word that we need to hear. And so we pray that you will accomplish the purposes that you have planned for us, in us, and through us as the day opens before us as we turn to your word. And we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, there's there's no doubt that Phileiman is one of the special treasures actually of the whole of the Bible. Um many of the letters are of course more studied. They're better known. But in terms of a personal letter that was clearly going to be uh given a a public reading, it is quite exceptional.

You can see that even in our English translation here uh just in the space of 25 words, we are introduced to what we've just been singing about, namely uh the work of God's grace. and his grace not in a generic way but in a very specific way in the lives of the central characters that we have here.

Paul of course as we noted last night as the writer Phileiman who is the recipient and this character Anessimus who is a runaway slave. I tried last night in reading it and then again this morning to do so in such a way that we would be confronted by the depth of feeling by the sense of fellowship that is uh before us.

It's really the pulse if you like of the tone of this letter. And apart from the unmmerited favor of God in the lives of each of these individuals uh bringing them from sin to salvation uh we wouldn't even have the letter at all because the characters again are so different from one another. uh the writer who was once a proud Pharisee um Phileiman who is a prosperous homeowner and then essentially one of the drags of Roman society.

What is it that brings these characters together apart from the fact that God has laid hold upon them? that they have come to know Jesus. And they have come not only to be loved by God and to love Christ, but they're learning to love those who are also in Christ.

And what Paul uh has affirmed in his letter to Colasse, incidentally, um Phileiman uh lived in Colasse. Some of you I was listening in and some of you have recently been to Ephesus and you know that Colass is about a 100 miles inland from Ephesus and uh this is where uh Phileiman was. uh Paul uh probably AD62 or so uh was writing this letter and if so then from his imprisonment in Rome and that would put it at the same period of time that he was that he had also written uh Ephesians and Colossians.

And so when you read both Ephesians and Colossians and you add into it Phileiman, we ought not to be surprised at all if there is a sense in which we say, but I I think I just picked that up earlier or I just I have something else in my mind that Paul wrote.

And if we go and look, we'll discover that it's there. I don't mean to confuse you folks with uh with history um because uh you really don't have very much history at all. And I I I think the I think this kind fellow who stands up here said that Beg will stand on some of your toes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well Well, you know, I think it was I think it was a couple from Alabama that uh I might as well I might as well pick on you. a couple from Alabama who had um in a trip to the UK uh gone to Runny and uh because they knew that uh that was where uh King John had finally as a result of pressure from the baronss uh because of uh the fact that he was overstepping his boundaries that he had there at Ronnie signed the Magna Carta and the person who was uh showing the people around this and uh giving details details on it.

Uh he said at one point in a very dramatic way and he said on here uh 12:15 King John signed the Magna Carta and the guy turns to his wife and says, "Ya'all, we just missed that by 45 minutes. 
[laughter]
 Actually, actually, I think he was from Georgia. I apologize.

Now, you're starting to think of Christopher Columbus again, aren't you? Um well um in in mentioning Colasse uh what Paul uh said when he wrote to the Colossians he's now affirming um his declaration if you like in the letter is now dramatized in this little letter um for example um Coloss Colossians 3 um in JB Phillips paraphrase in this new self of God's design there is no distinction between Greek and Hebrew.

Hebrew, Jew or Gentile, foreigner or savage, slave or free man. Christ is all that matters for Christ lives in them all. Admittedly, that's Philip's paraphrasing it, but you're familiar with that passage, I'm sure, from your own reading. um uh the Gettys when they took uh the phrase beneath the cross of Jesus uh and uh wrote another hymn uh that begins in the same way.

Um one of the one of the verses uh in the hymn that they wrote goes as follows. Beneath the cross of Jesus, his family is my own. One strangers chasing selfish dreams now one through grace alone. How could I then dishonor the one that you have loved beneath the cross of Jesus see the children called by God?

And I say to you again that you have in this tiny little moment in time in this very brief letter a drama of these very things. The humility of Paul and Paul is the first word in the letter. He introduces himself. He's no longer uh parading his credentials.

In fact, he identifies himself as a prisoner uh of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you check, you'll discover that there is no other letter in which he identifies himself in his introduction in this way. Uh Calvin says that the chains uh that were presumably on his hands as he penned this letter, his chains were the ornaments and badges of the commission he exercised on behalf of Christ.

Far from these things being a detriment to the work of God in him and through him, uh they were actually uh vitally important and indeed it was going to be very hard for somebody to receive a letter like this recognizing the one from whom it comes and the context out of which it comes and do anything other than acce which of course we'll see.

You find the same thing incidentally at the end of Galatians where after Paul has written about the nature of freedom in Christ and he has urged upon the readers of the letter he finally ends by saying and this is my own paraphrase now now I don't really want to have any trouble from any one of you because do you know what he then says he doesn't say because I am a mighty apostle no he says because I bear in my body the marks of Jesus Christ in other words his appeal to them is not on the strength of his position except a position as a servant of Christ.

Physically he was at the mercy of Rome but in reality he was the prisoner of Christ. It's a very interesting beginning. It's a very skillful letter this. Those of you who are lawyers uh will recognize the way in which in classical form he builds his case. He goes a long way in this letter before he actually tells him what he's on about.

Uh but it's really quite fantastic uh because the letter is about reconciliation. It's about freedom. It's about enslavement. It's about being in bondage. It's about being set free and so on. And so you will discover very quickly that he's honest, he's tactful, and he's skillful in his approach.

One of the commentators says, "How could Phileiman resist an appeal which was penned within prison walls by a manicled hand." Now you will notice that Timothy is with him in this greeting. Paul a prisoner for Christ Jesus and Timothy our brother. Uh but um uh Paul is clearly the primary letter writer.

And the letter is almost entirely in the singular, not exclusively in the singular. Um but from verse 4 to verse 21 it is in verse uh uh 3 uh the U there grace to you is plural and it becomes plural again in his final reference in 22 and so on but all of the rest of it is directed uh to um Phileiman.

Now um Paul a prisoner for Christ Jesus Timothy our brother to Phileimmon. Who is this person? Well, he is our beloved. Beloved, the word in Greek is agaptos. Uh he is beloved. Uh he is beloved as a fellow worker. The word there in Greek again is synergos which gives us our word English word synergy.

And so he says now you Phileiman you are just a a fantastic fellow. After all we know you as the beloved one. We know you as a partner in the gospel. I'm writing to you on the strength of your friendship and on the strength of your partnership. Now, there's nothing duplicitous about what Paul is doing here.

This is entirely honest. But I want you to notice how amazingly tactful it is because he's going to appeal to him on the basis of the very things that he assures him of. You are the beloved one. You are the partner one. It's as if he says, "Now, I want you to keep that in your mind as this letter goes on because it is clear, if we can fast forward for a moment just to verse 19.

It's clear that Phile demon owed his Christian life to Paul." So, I mean, he's he's got some leverage if you like. Again, Calvin, uh, since a soul is made regenerate by faith, and since faith comes by hearing, he who ministers doctrine plays the part of a father. That's good.

If faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, and it is the word of God that does the work of God in people, then what of the voice? Whether it is squeaky voice or a good voice or a deep voice or any kind of voice, what kind of instrument does it really really matter because it's it is the voice of God that sounds out from the scriptures and the pastor is a servant of the word is a servant of the word.

The all these beautiful meals that they do here, we we only see them when they arrive, but we don't see what's going on before they arrive unless we have a part in it. and most of us don't on an occasion like this. But all of that has gone on behind in order that the presentation can be there.

That's why incidentally when you go home, make sure you pray for your pastor. Remember to pray for him in preparation for teaching the Bible. While he's teaching the Bible, after he's taught the Bible, Spurgeon told his congregation at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, I can preach the same sermons, but if you will pray for me, the outcome will be vastly different.

You get a sense of that here with Paul to Phileiman. 
[clears throat]
 Now, I don't know if your brain works at all like mine. I should say I hope it doesn't, but um we don't know. We don't know in what context uh Phileiman actually came to faith. We can imagine uh that it was perhaps on a business trip when he went to Ephesus.

And while he was present in Ephesus, he realized in the afternoon hours when most people were taking a siesta that there were crowds of people all heading in one direction. Intrigued perhaps by that, uh he found himself in the lecture hall of Dyrannis listening to this uh little Jewish man who was now proclaiming Jesus.

I don't know if that was what happened, but somewhere there he heard the gospel. Did he come home and tell his wife Aia about that in the way for example that Andrew when he was called by Jesus I love it in the gospels it says and he went immediately and found his brother Peter and he told him well it would be hard to imagine that such an encounter took place uh for Phileiman if he didn't come back from the trip and his wife said tell me everything that happened and they said well there are a lot that happened but the most important Important thing is this.

Andrew told Peter, "We have found the Messiah." And Archipus who is a fellow soldier. Is Archipus their son? I don't know. But it would be nice to think so. To have a wife who's a sister and a son who's Christ's soldier. What a family gathering that is. How wonderful.

We marvel on days like this, don't we? At the grace and mercy of God. Uh just mentioning history a little bit. Um one of my fondest uh trips as a boy was to go to Sterling Castle. If you've gone to um Scotland, you probably have gone there to the Wallace monument, march back to England.

And um uh there when I was a boy in the ' 50s uh they still had a regiment of soldiers in Sterling Castle. And uh at a certain time in the morning, they came out and went on parade in the castle esplanade. And uh the cobbled driveway that runs up there alongside the esplanade is where uh you could either park or stand.

And uh out they would come and march. And so I would march. I I don't know if I was precocious. I hope I wasn't. But they marched and I marched. I marched alongside them up to the end and they turn around and I came back down. And then in Sunday school we sang what you sang.

I'm too young to march with the infantry. Right with the cavalry, shoot with the artillery. I'm too young to zoom or the enemy. But I'm in the Lord's army. And you know, by grace, I was in the Lord's army even as a boy, still marching. That's why you're here.

You're still marching, still flying, still going, reading this letter, thinking ourselves way back into the first century AD, and imagining what it was like when they had their Bible study fellowship in their house. Well, those are the recipients. And then in verse three, you have the greeting. Grace to you and peace.

Caris and Irene. Two lovely names. Every so often you meet an Irene 
[clears throat]
 um and a Caris. But uh Caris and Irene are just standard greetings. uh the the greeting in both Greek and in Hebrew, grace to you, the grace that has brought you into a saving knowledge of God and the peace that flows from a saving knowledge of God as a result of his kindness to you.

And here in verse three, as I say, it is plural as in verses 22 and in 25. Now the reason I point this out is because as with most of these letters when they are directed in a certain way although they would be they would be read initially by the the the initial recipient in we've got to imagine that they were read out loud to the gathering that was present.

And so it is a personal letter but is to be read in the context of the larger gathering. And so in verses 4-7, he proceeds to encourage Phileiman by letting him know a number of things. First of all, he says, "I'm thankful and I'm prayerful and I'm joyful."

Well, that's wonderful, isn't it? It's better than a lot of ways you could start your letter. I thank my God always when I remember you. I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have towards the Lord Jesus and all the saints that fills me with joy.

Fills me with joy. Now, it's good to always discover that what somebody says and what he does or what she says and what she does match up. So, for example, if I were to tell you about something and then you were to be in my personal company afterwards and you say, "Well, those things those things don't match up at all."

Well, why am I mentioning this? Because what he does here in writing is what he actually exhorts the church in Thessalonica to do in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 where he says to them, "Now listen, be joyful always. Pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances." That is all uh directive.

That's what he's saying. Come on now. This is the way you should be. Or you say, "Well, I wonder if that's true of Paul himself." Well, here you have the answer. The very things he urges upon others is displayed in his life. I thank God always. Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, "Oh, thank you, Lord."

That's good, isn't it? >> 
[laughter]
 >> That's very good because there are a lot of names come up in my prayers and that's not what I say. But maybe that's just me. But every time I think about you, Phileiman, I thank God for you because of the grace of God in you, to you, and through you.

And that that's the source of our thanksgiving for one another. We're not thankful for one another because of the the brightest people in the group, the best people in the group. They never forget our birthdays that we're all rotten sinners from the beginning of the day till the end of the day caught up in Christ and therefore the source of our thankfulness and our joy ought to be directly graced driven otherwise we can become some of the most miserable customers you've ever met in your life there's no selfish preoccupation here on the part of Paul is there despite his unfavor able circumstances.

If I I don't know, but if I was writing this, my letter would be like I don't know how it said I'm thankful, I'm joyful, I'm grateful. It would be like, can somebody come and get me out of this place because I'm an apostle and I don't like it in here and it's I'm getting fed up with everything and the meals are lousy and these things are hurting my wrists and so on. your friend Paul.

But remember when he writes to the Philippians, he says, "You shouldn't really be too worried about me because the things that have happened to me have fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel." You see, because when the gospel is our orientation, that even though things may be against us, different from the way we want them, we can rejoice that God's word will prevail.

And uh Paul is is a wonderful illustration of this. Now the reason for this uh thankfulness, joyfulness, prayerfulness is found in the news that has reached him. And there you have it. Because of the love and faith. I've heard how you love and trust both the Lord Jesus himself and those who believe in him. or uh Peterson in the message, I keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the master Jesus which brims over to other Christians.

That's a lovely picture as well, isn't it? Now, in verse six, Paul proceeds to tell him that when he says his prayers, he specifically asks, there he goes. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

Now let me tell you something that this sixth verse the meaning of just about every word in this verse is difficult. This verse is actually one of the more difficult verses in the whole of the New Testament. And what he is actually urging upon uh the re the readers who are in the hearing of this letter is that they might have a full knowledge of every good thing that is in usto for the sake of Christ for the service of Christ.

Now let me just pause pause and acknowledge years ago now in seeking to encourage our people in uh personal evangelism. I used this sixth verse in order to uh challenge and encouraging them in that way. And I at that time I was uh using the NIV. And in fairness to me, I went with the NIV only really to discover that the NIV in seeking to help us all along did a little bit too much helping.

Because if you have an NIV in front of you, you will notice that it says, "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith." Okay. So, what do you think when you say I pray I'd be active in sharing my faith? You say, "Well, I'm supposed to share my faith with people like when I meet them in the bus stop or whatever else it might be."

Which is of course the facts. The whole the whole uh commission of Christ to his church is that we would be active in sharing our faith. You say, "Well, then what was wrong with that?" Well, because that's not what actually Paul is saying when he says this. Here's Phillips.

That those who share your faith may also share your knowledge of all the good things that believing in Christ Jesus can mean to us. You see, the NIV is is pushing us in the direction of sharing our faith with somebody who doesn't have faith. And that is important.

But the idea here is the mutuality of faith. It is the partic the participation in a shared faith. He's saying it's very very important that you folks are delving deep into a knowledge of the reality of all that is yours in Christ. It's sharing in faith, not the sharing of faith.

Now, of course, we share our faith, but here, and this is where the ESV has helped us, and I pray that the sharing of your faith with one another may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

Now, if you think about it, that is in keeping with the rest of the letter. Paul, Onesimus, Phileiman and the church in the house are bound together in a mutual bond. And such a mutual bond that makes our much prized individualism 
[clears throat]
 look very shallow. Our relationship with Christ is a personal relationship, but it's not a private relationship.

There's no solo flying to heaven. It's all formation flying and under the direction of the lead pilot. Are are you following with me on this? I hope so, because I don't mean to make trouble where there isn't any trouble. I could just have done the NIV thing and most of you would have nodded your heads.

And um let's try it one more time. A paraphrase. I'm praying that the mutual participation which is proper to the Christian faith you hold may have its full effect in your realization of every good thing God wants to accomplish in us to lead us into the fullness of the fellowship that is of Christ.

I'll leave it to you for your homework from there. 
[snorts]
 That brings us to verse seven. It brings us closer to coffee, I hope. So, in verse seven, the whole passage is uh we could have called this uh study in terms of adear of endearment because the whole passage is um in terms of endearment.

And so verse seven uh gives uh a further word of encouragement. I've derived much joy and comfort from your love my brother for you have refreshed the hearts of the saints or if you like the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. I don't know what the candy is called here.

Um they're called refreshers at home. I'm sure America created them and then sent them to us. Um um we've sent things over here um only to be monitoriized and improved um I think in every case starting with a telephone. But anyway, um anyway, refreshers. Refreshers, you get a yellow one, a blue one, and whatever color they are.

And and and what what they do is they just when you put one in your mouth, it goes like like that. It's like it's good, you know? It's not like one of those toffes that are sort of like but this is like 
[snorts]
 it's it it gives you just a a little bit of a jazz just like right and and so that is what phan apparently had a capacity to do.

He was able to refresh the hearts of the saints. It wasn't because of Philem and his personality. It's because he was filled with the love of Christ. He was identified with the body of Christ. He was entering into the joys and sorrows. So that to find ourselves in Phileiman's company would be energizing rather than enervating.

In other words, what what is that donkey called uh in in Winnie the Pooh? Eeyore. >> Yeah. Yeah. The he's the antithesis of Eeyore. He's uh I don't know who he is, but he's not Eeyore. We know that some of us have an a sort of eortic tendency.

Yeah. So, how are you? H not so bad. 
[laughter]
 Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. I just got to get something. Is that Yeah. Well, I'm just going to stop here. I I've I've I've I've said all that I can say of this. I'm tempted to go to verse eight, but um let's just uh let's just remind ourselves of what we're discovering that God is the God of succeeding generations.

He's the God of differing personalities. He's the God who takes even the commonplace events of life um and quickens us in them and through them so that all of our days and all of our deeds might be good for someone, might be good for something. That um there are no incidentals really.

Um forth in thy name, O Lord, I go my daily labor to pursue thee only the resolve to know in all I think or speak or do. And um we have only a short we have only a short runway in front of us. Therefore, what a tragedy it would be to be anything other than thankful, joyful, and prayerful.

Let us pray. Just in a moment of silence, we receive your word. Gracious God, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit to bring home to our hearts and minds things that haven't even come out of my lips because it's actually for the voice of Jesus that we listen.

Bless us this day we pray our loved ones where they are the burdens that we um offload from ourselves and cast our cares upon you. We pray that you would help us as we walk out and into the balance of the day, not to pick them back up again and seek to struggle our way towards the finishing line.

Thank you for each other. Thank you for this lovely place. Thank you for all the benefits we enjoy. And we pray humbly in Jesus' name. Amen. This message was brought to you from Truth for Life, where the learning is for living. To learn more about Truth for Life with Aleister Beg, visit us online at truthforlife.org.